Exclusive Listing Agreements - The Way It Used to Be!

I have a friend who lives in North Carolina.  Her great-grandfather was a real estate agent back in the days when a real estate "listing" was a piece of paper on a list hung on the wall or in the window of a salesman's store.  At some point, he gave her an interest rate book of the sort we used to use to look up mortgage and interest payments before calculators and computers "revolutionized" those long lists of extrapolated data.  The book is worn, thumbed through, and yellowed with age and use.

Along with the book was a pad, or booklet, full of Exclusive Listing Agreements of the sort the great-grandfather had used.

The next time someone complains that, in the purchase and sale of real estate, there's an enormous amount of paperwork --or nowadays, electronic forms -- that they have to fill out and sign, give them a copy of this form.  This is the entire form for an exclusive listing agreement at one time, not so long ago.  

At first, I thought it was used in North Carolina in the 1930s, and it might have been, but the form has a copyright notice from a Texas company in the mid-1960s.  The ambiguity makes the curiousity of its contents even more poignant.  For example, it is not clear whether this was a form created and used by a single listing broker or a more general form created for the listing community of brokers.  It also creates a great visual drama for me as I imagine the time and place, the buildings, the wooden floors, the smell of tobacco in the shop, when this listing agreement would have been used.

Clearly, "back in the day" a whole lot of the business involved in everyday real estate transactions was being agreed to on a handshake, in reliance on verbal representations.  Call me a stickler for details (and you should; but then again, you should also call me for dinner): I prefer the security of written agreements that spell out exactly what the transaction includes, who is doing what, and who is getting and receiving what!  In this form, caveat emptor is the rule of the day.  The buyer is responsible for verifying the representations that the seller has given the salesman.

Notice some other wonderful, colorful, anacronistic details.  On the front:

• The contract is simplicity itself, merely obligating the seller to pay the broker a commission if a sale is completed within the term of the agreement.   Hmm, any potential problems there, issue-spotters?  
• The seller agrees to let a sign be put on, and removed from, the property.  Were there any trespassing cases brought against salesmen trying to repossess their signage?
• The existing bank and loan amount, interest payment and total monthly payment are disclosed on the listing agreement.